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From USSR to ISIS

Ben Rhodes, the president’s Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, recently told theNew York Times Magazine that newspapers no longer have foreign bureaus, so “they call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo.” The average reporter Rhodes encounters is 27 years old and “their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

One of the things they know nothing about is the major movement of modern times, Marxism-Leninism, also known as Communism, which first appeared nearly 100 years ago in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. From the start, the movement attracted attention around the world.